Let me reproduce a comment I’d made elsewhere: Hail to Angiras I think, freedom of speech
is meant for the perceptive and the responsible. On the East Coast of the
Let us take as illustration, thanks to Auroman for bringing it to my attention, an article from the Onion, 14 October 2003, at: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39182.
The article is entitled American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Defends Nazis' Right to Burn
Down American Civil Liberties Union Headquarters. The entire argument gets
quintessenced in the statement that “the principle of freedom of
expression must be supported in all cases.” This does not allow making any
distinction between different situations. Well, this is something worth
pondering about in the context of the Statue of Responsibility speaking to the
Statue of Liberty, when Freedom for the most part gets equated with License or
Immoderation carrying another kind of Dispensation.
ACLU president Nadine Strossen told
reporters that her organization intends to "vigorously and passionately
defend" the Georgia chapter of the American Nazi Party's First Amendment
right to freely express its hatred of the American Civil Liberties Union by
setting its New York office ablaze on November 25 (2003).
"I am reminded of the words of Voltaire:
'I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to
say it,'" Strossen said. "While the American Civil Liberties Union
vehemently disagrees with the idea of Nazis torching this building, the
principle of freedom of expression must be supported in all cases. If we take
away these Nazis' right to burn down our headquarters, we take away everyone's
right to burn down our headquarters."
Buddy Carver, president of the
American Civil Liberties Union associate
director Mel Rosenblatt agreed. "The real danger here is not the American
Nazi Party," he said. "The real danger here is what would happen to
the rest of us if the Buddy Carvers of this world were not allowed to commit
arson against nigger-loving, bleeding-heart-liberal Jew attorneys."
Making the case all the more controversial is
the neo-Nazis' demand that the ACLU's entire 315-person staff be in the
building at the time of the blaze. Strongly opposing the request are New York
City police commissioner William Bratton, fire chief Ed Holm and mayor Rudolph
Giuliani, who said that all 315 will die if trapped in the 47-story building
during the blaze. American Civil Liberties Union attorneys responded that they
will request a federal appeals hearing if the City of
"Yes, my loving wife Linda and three
wonderful children, Ben, Robby and Stephanie, will be devastated when I am
killed next month," ACLU attorney Harvey
Gross said. "But I recognize that, in a very real sense, it would be a
victory for Mr. Carver and his fellow hatemongers if I did not burn to death,
because their terrible message of bigotry and intolerance would be all the more
effective if suppressed."
The Carver case is one of several
controversial legal battles with which the American Civil Liberties Union has
been involved this judicial year. In State of California v. Tubbs, the
organization defended the right of a
"We can have no arbitrary setting of
limits when it comes to the Bill of Rights," Strossen said. "The
Constitution does not say, 'You have the right to express these opinions, but
not those opinions.' Nor does it say, 'You can express these opinions by word,
but not by violence.' For a free society to work, hatred, in all its forms,
must be encouraged."
So long as we have enough people in
this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy.— ACLU Founder Roger Baldwin
The ACLU is the nation's guardian of
liberty, working daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and
preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of
the United States guarantee everyone in this country.
This is noble, but what about the stories of holocaust?
Does that also become a part of the extreme of freedom that the perpetrators
must be granted? But perhaps here the teachings of the Gita must be properly
understood. For it, it was the question of a battle waged to uphold the
righteous, it was dharma-yuddha. We
need not go into that aspect here, except pointing out that our obligation lies
in developing perceptions for a nobler and elevating principles of life. To
conduct it for that cause is all that matters.
During his talks with the disciples Sri Aurobindo
observed how “one nation after another was hypnotised by Hitler's asuric māyā
and submitted to his diabolical charm, how the intellectuals did not raise any
voice against the Hitlerian menace. On seeing a photograph of Chamberlain and
Hitler taken during their meeting at
Nirodbaran continues: How many letters had Sri
Aurobindo to write to his disciples to show their grave error and the danger of
the Nazi victory! He quotes just one such letter Sri Aurobindo wrote to a
disciple, in 1942, "... it is a struggle for an ideal that has to
establish itself on earth in the life of humanity, for a Truth that has yet to realise
itself fully and against a darkness and falsehood that are trying to overwhelm
the earth and mankind in the immediate future. It is the forces behind the
battle that have to be seen and not this or that superficial circumstance… There
cannot be the slightest doubt that if one wins; there will be an end of all
such freedom and hope of light and truth and the work that has to be done will
be subjected to conditions which would make it humanly impossible; there will
be a reign of falsehood and darkness, a cruel oppression and degradation for
most of the human race such as people in this country do not dream of and
cannot yet at all realise. If the other side that has declared itself for the
free future of humanity triumphs, this terrible danger will have been averted
and conditions will have been created in which there will be a chance for the
Ideal to grow, for the Divine Work to be done, for the spiritual Truth for
which we stand to establish itself on the earth. Those who fight for this cause
are fighting for the Divine and against the threatened reign of the
Asura."
Sri Aurobindo saw Hitler as the “greatest menace the
world had to face”, and that the Nazi aggression meant "the peril of black
servitude”. Contrast this with the stand Mahatma Gandhi had taken. He was
either too simplistic or else excessively ethical in his approach to
socio-political problems of the time. This becomes patently recognisable when
we read his famous letter To Every Briton
during the dreadful days of the Second World War. What he had offered to the
people of the mighty empire against the ruthless and aggressive enemy was a high-minded
solution, in the face of Nazi trampling and extermination of the well cherished
values of civilised life a sanctimonious hope of good conduct winning in the
end. Through the
I want you to fight Nazism without arms, or, if I am
to retain the military terminology, with non-violent arms. I would like you to
lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You
will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the
countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful
island, with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these but neither
your souls nor your minds. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you
will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow
yourselves man, woman and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe
allegiance to them.
Putting such an ultra religious-moralistic doctrine on
the highest pedestal of virtuous excellence, making it an eminent principle of
administration in the daily mode of life of the individual as well as of a
whole society is not only to dwarf them; in fact, in its cruellest sense it is
to turn all towards anti-humanity. And what is the efficacy of such a doctrine
in its functioning? It sucks away the life-blood of a nation; it strangles the
spirit of freedom and happy enterprise; it kills with a dark knife the very
soul of man. A great humane and respectable virtue meant for another kind of
pursuit is converted into a deadly weapon of destruction to push everything in
the abyss of spiritual oblivion, into the sunless worlds that are enveloped in
blind gloom, andhena tamasāvratah as
the Isha Upanishad would declare.
Wouldn’t the authors of scholarly but conceited books
be overseen by the Statue of Responsibility? Shouldn’t they be? Shouldn’t shady
or dubious or suspect works be ostracized? sent to Coventry? But it is not
policing Responsibility one is speaking of; it is that Responsibility which is
born from within oneself, whose deeper source is the truth-perception,
truth-dynamism which has power to lead us on the path of genuine progress,
progress in the unfolding values of the spirit. Its immediate manifestation is
in the individual and social culture which has a refined, a gracious and
dignified poise in all its daily transactions. It comes with an austere tapasya
itself,—and there is no other way by which it can come,—and it is a tapasya
that has got to be done if promotion of principles and ideals is the
consideration. Perhaps it is easier to raise the Statue of Freedom than the
Statue of Responsibility. Even as Responsibility cannot flourish without
Freedom, Freedom in its apt sense cannot go without Responsibility.
RY Deshpande